A Moment on the Edge: 100 Years of Crime Stories by Women

INTRODUCTION

by Elizabeth George

Whether the story is a murder mystery, a tale of suspense, a psychological study of the characters affected by a devastating event, the retelling of a famous criminal act, a courtroom drama, an exposé, a police procedural, or a truthful account of an actual offense, the question remains the same. Why crime? Whether the characters involved are FBI agents, policemen and women, forensic scientists, journalists, military personnel, the man or woman on the street, private detectives, or the little old lady who lives next door, the question remains the same. Why crime? Be it murder (singular, serial, or mass), mayhem, robbery, assault, kidnapping, burglary, extortion, or blackmail, we still want to know: why crime? Why exists this fascination with crime and why, above all, exists this fascination with crime on the part of female writers?

I think there are several answers to these questions.

Crime writing is practically as old as writing itself and is consequently very much part of our literary tradition. The earliest crime stories come to us from the Bible: in a jealous rage, Cain kills Abel; in a jealous conspiracy, Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery in Egypt and fake his death for their devastated father; in lustful jealousy, David sends Bathsheba’s husband to the front lines in battle so that he might have the winsome woman for himself; in unrequited lust, two respected elders bear false witness against the virtuous Susanna, condemning her to death for adultery unless someone can come forward and disprove their story; fathers lie with their daughters in criminal acts of incest; brothers kill, fight with, lie about, and otherwise abuse their brothers; women demand the heads of men on platters; Judith decapitates Holofernes; Judas betrays Jesus of Nazareth; King Herod slays the newborn male children of the Hebrews…It’s a nasty place in the Old and New Testament, and we feed off this place from our earliest years.

Crime is mankind on the edge, in extremis, but more than that, crime is mankind stepping outside of the norm. For every Cain, there are a billion brothers who have co-existed throughout the centuries. For every David, there are ten million men who’ve turned away from a woman they want when they learn she is committed to another. But this is what makes crime so interesting. It isn’t what people normally do.

It would be nice to believe that cars slow down on the freeway when there is an accident because of the drivers’ heightened sense of caution: everyone sees the flashing lights up ahead, the smoke, the flares, the ambulances, the fire trucks, and hits the brakes so as not to end up in the same condition as the unfortunates currently being extricated from mangled metal. But this is not generally why people slow down. They slow down to gawk, their curiosity piqued. Why? Because an accident on the freeway is an anomaly, and anomalies interest us. They always interest us: have done from the beginning of time and will do till the end of it.

Brutal murders garner front-page space. Kidnappings, disappearances, riots, fatal auto accidents, plane crashes, terrorist bombings, armed robbery, snipers firing on the unsuspecting…all of this cuts into everyday life, awakening us to the fragility of our individual existences as it simultaneously whets our appetite to know. We grind to a halt as a nation to listen to the verdict in the O. J. Simpson case because there are base passions involved in whatever happened on Bundy Drive, and the base passions of that double killer awaken the base passions within ourselves. Blood spilled cries out for more blood to spill in retribution for the act. We seek a punishment to fit each crime. Crime is as old as humanity. But so is sensation. So is vengeance.

Crime literature gives us a satisfaction that we are often denied in life. In life, we never do know who really killed Nicole and Ron; we only suspect there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll; we are left to wonder about Dr. Shepherd’s wife and Jeffrey MacDonald’s capacity for truth or self-delusion. The Green River killer disappears into the primordial slime from which he rose, the Zodiac killer joins him there, and we are left with only the questions themselves: who were these people and why did they murder? But in crime fiction, the killers face justice. It can be real justice, poetic justice, or psychological justice. But face it they do. They are unmasked and normalcy is restored. There is vast satisfaction for the reader in that, certainly more satisfaction than is garnered from the investigation into and punishment for an actual crime.

For the writer who wishes to explore characters, there is nothing so catastrophically catalytic as the intrusion of a crime into an otherwise peaceful landscape. A crime places everyone into a crucible: the investigators, the perpetrator, the victims, and those in relationship to the investigators, the perpetrator, and the victims. Within this crucible of life’s most monstrous acts the mettle of the characters is tested. It is when characters confront the most serious challenges to their beliefs, their peace, their sanity, and their way of life that their pathology is triggered. And it is the pathology of the individual character clashing with the pathology of all the other characters that is the stuff of drama and catharsis.

Some of our most enduring pieces of literature have a heinous crime as their backdrop. Hamlet’s monumental mental struggle to overcome his conscience and act the part of Nemesis could not occur had the poisoning of his father not happened in a brutal act of fratricide. Oedipus could not fulfill his destiny without first killing King Laius on the road to Thebes. Medea would not be in the position in which she is placed in Corinth—an outcast about to be cast out by a nervous Creon all too aware of her abilities as a sorceress—had her reputation as the mastermind behind King Pelias’s death not preceded her. So it should come as no surprise to anyone who reads that crimes continue not only to fascinate writers but also to serve as the backbone for much of their prose.

What a crime does in a piece of literature is two-fold. First, it serves as a throughline for the story to follow: the crime must be investigated and solved within the twists and turns of the plot. But secondly and perhaps more importantly, the crime also acts as a skeleton for the body of the tale that the writer wishes to tell. On this skeleton, the writer can hang as much or as little as she likes. She can keep the skeleton down to the bones alone and tell a story that moves smoothly, concisely, and without deviation or decoration to its revelation and conclusion. Or she can hang upon the skeleton the muscles, tissues, veins, organs, and blood of such diverse elements of storytelling as theme, exploration of character, life and literary symbols, subplots, etc., as well as the specific crime-oriented story elements of clues, red herrings, suspense, and a list of time-honored motifs peculiar to mysteries: the hermetically sealed death chamber (or locked room), the most obvious place, the trail of false clues left by the real killer, the fixed idea, and on and on. Thus, her characters can march hand-in-hand in the direction of an ineluctable conclusion, or they can become sidetracked by the myriad possibilities offered to them through means of an expanded storyline and a more complicated structure.

Why, then, would a writer ever consider dabbling in anything else? There is no reason that I can see. For as long as a writer adheres to the notion that the only rule is there are no rules, the sky’s the limit within this field.

This still doesn’t answer the question about female writers’ attraction to crime literature, and it is indeed a question I’ve been asked over and over again by journalists, with a rather tedious regularity.

The Golden Age of Mystery in Great Britain and the Common-wealth—which I would consider spanning the years from the twenties through the fifties—is dominated by women. Indeed, their names comprise a pantheon into whose company every modern writer aspires to join. Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham…It’s not terribly difficult to sort out why women writers throughout the twentieth century endeavored to join this distinguished company: once one woman made an inroad into an area of literature, other women were quick to follow. The fascination with crime writing on the part of females can thus be explained with ease: women chose to write crime stories because they were successful at it. Success on the part of one woman breeds the desire for success on the part of another.

In the United States, this also holds true. But the difference in the United States is that the Golden Age of Mystery is dominated by men and that women are Janet-come-latelies to it. When we think of the Golden Age in America, we think of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, of first-person narratives with tough-guy private eyes who smoke, drink bourbon, live in seedy apartments, and dismissively refer to women as dames. They use guns and their fists, and they’ve got ’tude to spare. They’re loners, and they like it that way.

Breaking into this male-dominated world required guts and tenacity on the part of women writers. Some of them opted to write kinder, gentler mysteries in order to offer something more in keeping with the delicate sensibilities of the female readers they were hoping to attract. Others decided to barge right in and join the men, creating female private eyes who were as hard-bitten as the men they sought to replace. Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky proved irrefutably that a female p.i. would be accepted by an audience of both men and women readers, and a score of other female writers began to follow in Grafton and Paretsky’s footsteps. Thus, the arena widened in the United States as well, offering women another outlet for their creative energies.

Creating crime fiction offers writers a vast landscape as broad and as varied as crime itself. Because there are no hard-and-fast rules and because those few rules that exist exist to be broken (witness the uproar over The Murder of Roger Ackroyd when it was first published in 1926), the writer can choose any setting on earth which she can then people with: teenagers as sleuths, children as sleuths, old ladies as sleuths, animals as sleuths, shut-ins and agoraphobics as sleuths, teachers as sleuths, doctors as sleuths, astronauts as sleuths, and on and on as far as the imagination can carry her. With this as a basic tenet of crime writing, the real question should be not why do so many women write crime stories? but why doesn’t everyone write crime stories?

This volume doesn’t attempt to answer that question. What it does, however, is present for your entertainment a century’s collection of crime and suspense stories by women. What you’ll notice about this collection is that it includes names closely associated with crime writing—Dorothy L. Sayers, Minette Walters, Sue Grafton, and others—but it also includes some names one doesn’t normally associate with crime writing at all: names like Nadine Gordimer and Joyce Carol Oates. I’ve tried to come up with as wide a range of female authors as possible because a wide range reflects my primary belief about crime writing and that is this: crime writing does not have to be considered genre writing. It is not confined to a few moderately talented practitioners. And most importantly, it is indeed something that can stand, will stand, and has already stood the test of time.

One of the greatest sources of irritation to me as a writer is the number of people who stubbornly consider crime writing a lesser form of literary endeavor. Throughout the years that I’ve written crime fiction, I’ve had numerous conversations with people that reflect this very strange point of view. One man at a writing conference told me that he was going to write crime fiction as practice and then, later on, he would write a real novel. (Like making tacos until you can graduate to chocolate cake from scratch? I asked him innocently.) A journalist in Germany once asked me what I thought of the fact that my novels weren’t reviewed in a highbrow newspaper that I had never heard of. (Gosh. I don’t know. I guess that paper doesn’t have much impact on sales, I told her.) Several times people have stood up during Q&A at the end of speeches I’ve given and asked me why a writer like you doesn’t write serious novels. (I consider crime fiction serious, I tell them.) But always there is this underlying belief on the part of some readers and some critics: crime fiction isn’t something that should be taken seriously.

This is an unfortunate point of view. While it’s true that some crime fiction is lowbrow, formulaic, and without much merit, the same can be said of anything else that’s published. Some books are good, some are indifferent, and some are downright bad. But the reality is that a great deal of crime fiction has done what mainstream literary fiction only dreams of doing: it has successfully stood the test of time. For every Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes still inspires devotion and enthusiasm over one hundred years after his creation, there are thousands of writers whose work of ostensible literature has faded into complete obscurity. Given the choice between being labeled a literary writer and disappearing ten years after I hang up my spurs or being labeled only a crime writer and having my stories and novels read one hundred years from now, I know which choice I would make and I can only assume any writer of sense would make the same one.

For my money, literature is whatever lasts. During his lifetime, no one would have accused William Shakespeare of writing great literature. He was a popular playwright who peopled his productions with characters who satisfied every possible level of education and experience in his audience. Charles Dickens wrote serials for the newspaper, penning them as quickly as he could in order to support his ever-burgeoning family. And the aforementioned Arthur Conan Doyle, a young ophthalmologist building a practice, wrote mysteries to while away the time as he waited for patients to show up in his surgery. None of these writers was worried about immortality. None of them wrote while wondering whether their work would be considered literature, commercial fiction, or trash. They were each concerned about telling a great story, telling it well, and placing it before an audience. The rest they placed—as wise men and women do—into the hands of time.

This collection of authors represents that same philosophy of writing what you want to write and writing it well. Some of them have done that, died, and achieved a modicum of immortality. The rest of them remain earthbound, still writing, and waiting to see how time will deal with them. All of them share in common a desire to explore mankind in a moment on the edge. The edge equates to the crime committed. How the characters deal with the edge is the story.

A Jury of Her Peers

SUSAN GLASPELL

Susan Keating Glaspell (1876-1948) was born in Davenport, Iowa, attended Drake University and the University of Chicago, and worked as a journalist before turning to full-time fiction-writing in 1901. Her first novel, The Glory of the Conquered, appeared in 1909 and her first story collection, Lifted Masks, in 1912, but she would achieve her greatest fame as a playwright, culminating in a controversial Pulitzer Prize for Alison’s House (1930), inspired by the life of Emily Dickinson. From 1914 to 1921, she was a member of the Provincetown Players, a bohemian theatre-based community founded by her idealist husband George Cram Cook. Among the other members were Edna St. Vincent Millay, Djuna Barnes, Edna Ferber, John Reed, and the writer who would become the greatest American playwright of the time, Eugene O’Neill.

After early stories that were popular romances of the local-color school, Glaspell was influenced to adopt a more naturalistic approach, along with socialist political attitudes, by her husband and Floyd Dell. The rebellion of women against the domination of simple-minded males was a continuing subject. One of her plays, the one-act Trifles (1916), became the basis for her most famous story, A Jury of Her Peers (1917). There’s no denying this is a detective story—indeed, in the fashion of the time, one in which amateur sleuths are more perceptive than professionals—but it is a highly unconventional, one-of-a-kind detective story in which the detection is used to make a serious thematic point.

When Martha Hale opened the storm-door and got a cut of the north wind, she ran back for her big woolen scarf. As she hurriedly wound that round her head her eye made a scandalized sweep of her kitchen. It was no ordinary thing that called her away—it was probably further from ordinary than anything that had ever happened in Dickson County. But what her eye took in was that her kitchen was in no shape for leaving: her bread all ready for mixing, half the flour sifted and half unsifted.

She hated to see things half done; but she had been at that when the team from town stopped to get Mr. Hale, and then the sheriff came running in to say his wife wished Mrs. Hale would come too—adding, with a grin, that he guessed she was getting scary and wanted another woman along. So she had dropped everything right where it was.

Martha! now came her husband’s impatient voice. Don’t keep folks waiting out here in the cold.

She again opened the storm-door, and this time joined the three men and the one woman waiting for her in the big two-seated buggy.

After she had the robes tucked around her she took another look at the woman who sat beside her on the back seat. She had met Mrs. Peters the year before at the county fair, and the thing she remembered about her was that she didn’t seem like a sheriff’s wife. She was small and thin and didn’t have a strong voice. Mrs. Gorman, sheriff’s wife before Gorman went out and Peters came in, had a voice that somehow seemed to be backing up the law with every word. But if Mrs. Peters didn’t look like a sheriff’s wife, Peters made it up in looking like a sheriff. He was to a dot the kind of man who could get himself elected sheriff—a heavy man with a big voice, who was particularly genial with the law-abiding, as if to make it plain that he knew the difference between criminals and non-criminals. And right there it came into Mrs. Hale’s mind with a stab, that this man who was so pleasant and lively with all of them was going to the Wrights’ now as a sheriff.

The country’s not very pleasant this time of year, Mrs. Peters at last ventured, as if she felt they ought to be talking as well as the men.

Mrs. Hale scarcely finished her reply, for they had gone up a little hill and could see the Wright place now, and seeing it did not make her feel like talking. It looked very lonesome this cold March morning. It had always been a lonesome-looking place. It was down in a hollow, and the poplar trees around it were lonesome-looking trees. The men were looking at it and talking about what had happened. The county attorney was bending to one side of the buggy, and kept looking steadily at the place as they drew up to it.

I’m glad you came with me, Mrs. Peters said nervously, as the two women were about to follow the men in through the kitchen door.

Even after she had her foot on the doorstep, her hand on the knob, Martha Hale had a moment of feeling she could not cross the threshold. And the reason it seemed she couldn’t cross it now was simply because she hadn’t crossed it before. Time and time again it had been in her mind, I ought to go over and see Minnie Foster—she still thought of her as Minnie Foster, though for twenty years she had been Mrs. Wright. And then there was always something to do and Minnie Foster would go from her mind. But now she could come.

The men went over to the stove. The women stood close together by the door. Young Henderson, the county attorney, turned around and said, Come up to the fire, ladies.

Mrs. Peters took a step forward, then stopped. I’m not—cold, she said.

And so the two women stood by the door, at first not even so much as looking around the kitchen.

The men talked for a minute about what a good thing it was the sheriff had sent his deputy out that morning to make a fire for them, and then Sheriff Peters stepped back from the stove, unbuttoned his outer coat, and leaned his hands on the kitchen table in a way that seemed to mark the beginning of official business. Now, Mr. Hale, he said in a sort of semi-official voice, before we move things about, you tell Mr. Henderson just what it was you saw when you came here yesterday morning.

The county attorney was looking around the kitchen.

By the way, he said, has anything been moved? He turned to the sheriff. Are things just as you left them yesterday?

Peters looked from cupboard to sink; from that to a small worn rocker a little to one side of the kitchen table.

It’s just the same.

Somebody should have been left here yesterday, said the county attorney.

Oh—yesterday, returned the sheriff, with a little gesture as of yesterday having been more than he could bear to think of. "When I had to send Frank to Morris Center for that man who went crazy—let me tell you, I had my hands full yesterday. I knew you could get back from Omaha by today, George, and as long as I went over everything here myself—"

Well, Mr. Hale, said the county attorney, in a way of letting what was past and gone go, tell just what happened when you came here yesterday morning.

Mrs. Hale, still leaning against the door, had that sinking feeling of the mother whose child is about to speak a piece. Lewis often wandered along and got things mixed up in a story. She hoped he would tell this straight and plain, and not say unnecessary things that would just make things harder for Minnie Foster. He didn’t begin at once, and she noticed that he looked queer—as if standing in that kitchen and having to tell what he had seen there yesterday morning made him almost sick.

Yes, Mr. Hale? the county attorney reminded.

Harry and I had started to town with a load of potatoes, Mrs. Hale’s husband began.

Harry was Mrs. Hale’s oldest boy. He wasn’t with them now, for the very good reason that those potatoes never got to town yesterday and he was taking them this morning, so he hadn’t been home when the sheriff stopped to say he wanted Mr. Hale to come over to the Wright place and tell the county attorney his story there, where he could point it all out. With all Mrs. Hale’s other emotions came the fear that maybe Harry wasn’t dressed warm enough—they hadn’t any of them realized how that north wind did bite.

We come along this road, Hale was going on, with a motion of his hand to the road over which they had just come, and as we got in sight of the house I says to Harry, ‘I’m goin’ to see if I can’t get John Wright to take a telephone.’ You see, he explained to Henderson, "unless I can get somebody to go in with me they won’t come out this branch road except for a price I can’t pay. I’d spoke to Wright about it once before; but he put me off, saying folks talked too much anyway, and all he asked was peace and quiet—guess you know about how much he talked himself. But I thought maybe if I went to the house and talked about it before his wife, and said all the womenfolks liked the telephones, and that in this lonesome stretch of road it would be a good thing—well, I said to Harry that that was what I was going to say—though I said at the same time that I didn’t know as what his wife wanted made much difference to John—"

Now, there he was!—saying things he didn’t need to say. Mrs. Hale tried to catch her husband’s eye, but fortunately the county attorney interrupted with:

Let’s talk about that a little later, Mr. Hale. I do want to talk about that, but I’m anxious now to get along to just what happened when you got here.

When he began this time, it was very deliberately and carefully:

I didn’t see or hear anything. I knocked at the door. And still it was all quiet inside. I knew they must be up—it was past eight o’clock. So I knocked again, louder, and I thought I heard somebody say ‘Come in.’ I wasn’t sure—I’m not sure yet. But I opened the door—this door, jerking a hand toward the door by which the two women stood, and there, in that rocker—pointing to it—sat Mrs. Wright.

Everyone in the kitchen looked at the rocker. It came into Mrs. Hale’s mind that that rocker didn’t look in the least like Minnie Foster—the Minnie Foster of twenty years before. It was a dingy red, with wooden rungs up the back, and the middle rung was gone, and the chair sagged to one side,

How did she—look? the county attorney was inquiring.

Well, said Hale, she looked—queer.

How do you mean—queer?

As he asked it he took out a notebook and pencil. Mrs. Hale did not like the sight of that pencil. She kept her eye fixed on her husband, as if to keep him from saying unnecessary things that would go into that notebook and make trouble.

Hale did speak guardedly, as if the pencil had affected him too.

Well, as if she didn’t know what she was going to do next. And kind of—done up.

How did she seem to feel about your coming?

"Why, I don’t think she minded—one way or other. She didn’t pay much attention. I said, ‘Ho’ do, Mrs. Wright? It’s cold, ain’t it?’ And she said, ‘Is it?’—and went on pleatin’ at her apron.

"Well, I was surprised. She didn’t ask me to come up to the stove, or to sit down, but just set there, not even lookin’ at me. And so I said: ‘I want to see John.’

"And then she—laughed. I guess you would call it a laugh.

"I thought of Harry and the team outside, so I said, a little sharp, ‘Can I see John?’ ‘No,’ says she—kind of dull like. ’Ain’t he home?’ says I. Then she looked at me. ‘Yes,’ says she, ‘he’s home.’ Then why can’t I see him?’ I asked her, out of patience with her now. ‘’Cause he’s dead.’ says she, just as quiet and dull—and fell to pleatin’ her apron. ‘Dead?’ says I, like you do when you can’t take in what you’ve heard.

"She just nodded her head, not getting a bit excited, but rockin’ back and forth.

"‘Why—where is he?’ says I, not knowing what to say.

She just pointed upstairs—like this—pointing to the room above.

"I got up, with the idea of going up there myself. By this time I—didn’t know what to do. I walked from there to here; then I says: ‘Why, what did he die of?’

‘He died of a rope around his neck,’ says she; and just went on pleatin’ at her apron.

Hale stopped speaking, and stood staring at the rocker, as if he were still seeing the woman who had sat there the morning before. Nobody spoke; it was as if everyone were seeing the woman who had sat there the morning before.

And what did you do then? the county attorney at last broke the silence.

I went out and called Harry. I thought I might—need help. I got Harry in, and we went upstairs. His voice fell almost to a whisper. There he was—lying over the—

I think I’d rather have you go into that upstairs, the county attorney interrupted, where you can point it all out. Just go on now with the rest of the story.

Well, my first thought was to get that rope off. It looked— He stopped, his face twitching.

"But Harry, he went up to him, and he said, ‘No, he’s dead all right, and we’d better not touch anything.’ So we went downstairs.

"She was still sitting that same way. ‘Has anybody been notified?’ I asked. ‘No,’ says she, unconcerned.

"‘Who did this, Mrs. Wright?’ said Harry. He said it business-like, and she stopped pleatin’ at her apron. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘You don’t know?’ says Harry. ‘Weren’t you sleepin’ in the bed with him?’ ‘Yes,’ says she, ‘but I was on the inside.’ ‘Somebody slipped a rope round his neck and strangled him, and you didn’t wake up?’ says Harry. ‘I didn’t wake up,’ she said after him.

"We may have looked as if we didn’t see how that could be, for after a minute she said, ‘I sleep sound.’

Harry was going to ask her more questions, but I said maybe that weren’t our business; maybe we ought to let her tell her story first to the coroner or the sheriff. So Harry went fast as he could over to High Road—the Rivers’ place, where there’s a telephone.

And what did she do when she knew you had gone for the coroner? The attorney got his pencil in his hand all ready for writing.

She moved from that chair to this one over here—Hale pointed to a small chair in the corner—and just sat there with her hands held together and looking down. I got a feeling that I ought to make some conversation, so I said I had come in to see if John wanted to put in a telephone: and at that she started to laugh, and then she stopped and looked at me—scared.

At the sound of a moving pencil the man who was telling the story looked up.

I dunno—maybe it wasn’t scared, he hastened; I wouldn’t like to say it was. Soon Harry got back, and then Dr. Lloyd came, and you, Mr. Peters, and so I guess that’s all I know that you don’t.

He said that last with relief, and moved a little, as if relaxing. Everyone moved a little. The county attorney walked toward the stair door.

I guess we’ll go upstairs first—then out to the barn and around there.

He paused and looked around the kitchen.

You’re convinced there was nothing important here? he asked the sheriff. Nothing that would—point to any motive?

The sheriff too looked all around, as if to reconvince himself.

Nothing here but kitchen things, he said, with a little laugh for the insignificance of kitchen things.

The county attorney was looking at the cupboard—a peculiar, ungainly structure, half closet and half cupboard, the upper part of it being built in the wall, and the lower part just the old-fashioned kitchen cupboard. As if its queerness attracted him, he got a chair and opened the upper part and looked in. After a moment he drew his hand away sticky.

Here’s a nice mess, he said resentfully.

The two women had drawn nearer, and now the sheriff’s wife spoke.

Oh—her fruit, she said, looking to Mrs. Hale for sympathetic understanding. She turned back to the county attorney and explained: She worried about that when it turned to cold last night. She said the fire would go out and her jars might burst.

Mrs. Peters’s husband broke into a laugh.

Well, can you beat the woman! Held for murder, and worrying about her preserves!

The young attorney set his lips.

I guess before we’re through with her she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about.

Oh, well, said Mrs. Hale’s husband, with good-natured superiority, women are used to worrying over trifles.

The two women moved a little closer together. Neither of them spoke. The county attorney seemed suddenly to remember his manners—and think of his future.

And yet, said he, with the gallantry of a young politician, for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies?

The women did not speak, did not unbend. He went to the sink and began washing his hands. He turned to wipe them on the roller towel—whirled it for a cleaner place.

Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?

He kicked his foot against some dirty pans under the sink.

There’s a great deal of work to be done on a farm, said Mrs. Hale stiffly.

To be sure. And yet—with a little bow to her—I know there are some Dickson County farmhouses that do not have such roller towels. He gave it a pull to expose its full length again.

Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men’s hands aren’t always as clean as they might be.

Ah, loyal to your sex, I see, he laughed. He stopped and gave her a keen look. But you and Mrs. Wright were neighbors. I suppose you were friends, too.

Martha Hale shook her head.

I’ve seen little enough of her of late years. I’ve not been in this house—it’s more than a year.

And why was that? You didn’t like her?

I liked her well enough, she replied with spirit. Farmers’ wives have their hands full, Mr. Henderson. And then—She looked around the kitchen.

Yes? he encouraged.

It never seemed a very cheerful place, said she, more to herself than to him.

No, he agreed; I don’t think anyone could call it cheerful. I shouldn’t say she had the homemaking instinct.

Well, I don’t know as Wright had, either, she muttered.

You mean they didn’t get on very well? he was quick to ask.

No; I don’t mean anything, she answered, with decision. As she turned a little away from him, she added: But I don’t think a place would be any the cheerfuler for John Wright’s bein’ in it.

I’d like to talk to you about that a little later, Mrs. Hale, he said. I’m anxious to get the lay of things upstairs now.

He moved toward the stair door, followed by the two men.

I suppose anything Mrs. Peters does’ll be all right? the sheriff inquired. She was to take in some clothes for her, you know—and a few little things. We left in such a hurry yesterday.

The county attorney looked at the two women whom they were leaving alone there among the kitchen things.

Yes—Mrs. Peters, he said, his glance resting on the woman who was not Mrs. Peters, the big farmer woman who stood behind the sheriff’s wife. Of course Mrs. Peters is one of us, he said, in a manner of entrusting responsibility. And keep your eye out, Mrs. Peters, for anything that might be of use. No telling; you women might come upon a clue to the motive—and that’s the thing we need.

Mr. Hale rubbed his face after the fashion of a show man getting ready for a pleasantry.

But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it? he said; and, having delivered himself of this, he followed the others through the stair door.

The women stood motionless and silent, listening to the footsteps, first upon the stairs, then in the room above them.

Then, as if releasing herself from something strange, Mrs. Hale began to arrange the dirty pans under the sink, which the county attorney’s disdainful push of the foot had deranged.

I’d hate to have men comin’ into my kitchen, she said testily—snoopin’ around and criticizin’.

Of course it’s no more than their duty, said the sheriff’s wife, in her manner of timid acquiescence.

Duty’s all right, replied Mrs. Hale bluffly; but I guess that deputy sheriff that come out to make the fire might have got a little of this on. She gave the roller towel a pull. Wish I’d thought of that sooner! Seems mean to talk about her for not having things slicked up when she had to come away in such a hurry.

She looked around the kitchen. Certainly it was not slicked up. Her eye was held by a bucket of sugar on a low shelf. The cover was off the wooden bucket, and beside it was a paper bag—half full.

Mrs. Hale moved toward it.

She was putting this in here, she said to herself—slowly.

She thought of the flour in her kitchen at home—half sifted, half not sifted. She had been interrupted, and had left things half done. What had interrupted Minnie Foster? Why had that work been left half done? She made a move as if to finish it,—unfinished things always bothered her,—and then she glanced around and saw that Mrs. Peters was watching her—and she didn’t want Mrs. Peters to get that feeling she had got of work begun and then—for some reason—not finished.

It’s a shame about her fruit, she said, and walked toward the cupboard that the county attorney had opened, and got on the chair, murmuring: I wonder if it’s all gone.

It was a sorry enough looking sight, but Here’s one that’s all right, she said at last. She held it toward the light. This is cherries, too. She looked again. I declare I believe that’s the only one.

With a sigh, she got down from the chair, went to the sink, and wiped off the bottle.

She’ll feel awful bad, after all her hard work in the hot weather. I remember the afternoon I put up my cherries last summer.

She set the bottle on the table, and, with another sigh, started to sit down in the rocker. But she did not sit down. Something kept her from sitting down in that chair. She straightened—stepped back, and, half turned away, stood looking at it, seeing the woman who sat there pleatin’ at her apron.

The thin voice of the sheriff’s wife broke in upon her: I must be getting those things from the front room closet. She opened the door into the other room, started in, stepped back. You coming with me, Mrs. Hale? she asked nervously. You—you could help me get them.

They were soon back—the stark coldness of that shut-up room was not a thing to linger in.

My! said Mrs. Peters, dropping the things on the table and hurrying to the stove.

Mrs. Hale stood examining the clothes the woman who was being detained in town had said she wanted.

Wright was close! she exclaimed, holding up a shabby black skirt that bore the marks of much making over. I think maybe that’s why she kept so much to herself. I s’pose she felt she couldn’t do her part; and then, you don’t enjoy things when you feel shabby. She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively—when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls, singing in the choir. But that—oh, that was twenty years ago.

With a carefulness in which there was something tender, she folded the shabby clothes and piled them at one corner of the table. She looked at Mrs. Peters, and there was something in the other woman’s look that irritated her.

She don’t care, she said to herself. Much difference it makes to her whether Minnie Foster had pretty clothes when she was a girl.

Then she looked again, and she wasn’t so sure; in fact, she hadn’t at any time been perfectly sure about Mrs. Peters. She had that shrinking manner, and yet her eyes looked as if they could see a long way into things.

This all you was to take in? asked Mrs. Hale.

No, said the sheriff’s wife; she said she wanted an apron. Funny thing to want, she ventured in her nervous little way, for there’s not much to get you dirty in jail, goodness knows. But I suppose just to make her feel more natural. If you’re used to wearing an apron…She said they were in the bottom drawer of this cupboard. Yes—here they are. And then her little shawl that always hung on the stair door.

She took the small gray shawl from behind the door leading upstairs, and stood a minute looking at it.

Suddenly Mrs. Hale took a quick step toward the other woman.

Mrs. Peters!

Yes, Mrs. Hale?

Do you think she—did it?

A frightened look blurred the other things in Mrs. Peters’s eyes.

Oh, I don’t know, she said, in a voice that seemed to shrink away from the subject.

Well, I don’t think she did, affirmed Mrs. Hale stoutly. Asking for an apron, and her little shawl. Worryin’ about her fruit.

Mr. Peters says— Footsteps were heard in the room above; she stopped, looked up, then went on in a lowered voice: Mr. Peters says—it looks bad for her. Mr. Henderson is awful sarcastic in a speech, and he’s going to make fun of her saying she didn’t—wake up.

For a moment Mrs. Hale had no answer. Then, Well, I guess John Wright didn’t wake up—when they was slippin’ that rope under his neck, she muttered.

"No, it’s strange, breathed Mrs. Peters. They think it was such a—funny way to kill a man."

She began to laugh; at the sound of the laugh, abruptly stopped.

That’s just what Mr. Hale said, said Mrs. Hale, in a resolutely natural voice. There was a gun in the house. He says that’s what he can’t understand.

Mr. Henderson said, coming out, that what was needed for the case was a motive. Something to show anger—or sudden feeling.

Well, I don’t see any signs of anger around here, said Mrs. Hale. I don’t—

She stopped. It was as if her mind tripped on something. Her eye was caught by a dish-towel in the middle of the kitchen table. Slowly she moved toward the table. One half of it was wiped clean, the other half messy. Her eyes made a slow, almost unwilling turn to the bucket of sugar and the half empty bag beside it. Things begun—and not finished.

After a moment she stepped back, and said, in that manner of releasing herself:

Wonder how they’re finding things upstairs? I hope she had it a little more red up up there. You know—she paused, and feeling gathered—"it seems kind of sneaking; locking her up in town and coming out here to get her own house to turn against her!"

But, Mrs. Hale, said the sheriff’s wife, the law is the law.

I s’pose ’tis, answered Mrs. Hale shortly.

She turned to the stove, saying something about that fire not being much to brag of. She worked with it a minute, and when she straightened up she said aggressively:

The law is the law—and a bad stove is a bad stove. How’d you like to cook on this?—pointing with the poker to the broken lining. She opened the oven door and started to express her opinion of the oven; but she was swept into her own thoughts, thinking of what it would mean, year after year, to have that stove to wrestle with. The thought of Minnie Foster trying to bake in that oven—and the thought of her never going over to see Minnie Foster—

She was startled by hearing Mrs. Peters say: A person gets discouraged—and loses heart.

The sheriff’s wife had looked from the stove to the sink—to the pail of water which had been carried in from outside. The two women stood there silent, above them the footsteps of the men who were looking for evidence against the woman who had worked in that kitchen. That look of seeing into things, of seeing through a thing to something else, was in the eyes of the sheriff’s wife now. When Mrs. Hale next spoke to her, it was gently:

Better loosen up your things, Mrs. Peters. We’ll not feel them when we go out.

Mrs. Peters went to the back of the room to hang up the fur tippet she was wearing. A moment later she exclaimed, Why, she was piecing a quilt, and held up a large sewing basket piled high with quilt pieces.

Mrs. Hale spread some of the blocks on the table.

It’s log-cabin pattern, she said, putting several of them together. Pretty, isn’t it?

They were so engaged with the quilt that they did not hear the footsteps on the stairs. Just as the stair door opened Mrs. Hale was saying:

Do you suppose she was going to quilt it or just knot it?

The sheriff threw up his hands.

They wonder whether she was going to quilt it or just knot it!

There was a laugh for the ways of women, a warming of hands over the stove, and then the county attorney said briskly:

Well, let’s go right out to the barn and get that cleared up.

I don’t see as there’s anything so strange, Mrs. Hale said resentfully, after the outside door had closed on the three men—our taking up our time with little things while we’re waiting for them to get the evidence. I don’t see as it’s anything to laugh about.

Of course they’ve got awful important things on their minds, said the sheriff’s wife apologetically.

They returned to an inspection of the blocks for the quilt. Mrs. Hale was looking at the fine, even sewing, and preoccupied with thoughts of the woman who had done that sewing, when she heard the sheriff’s wife say, in a queer tone:

Why, look at this one.

She turned to take the block held out to her.

The sewing, said Mrs. Peters, in a troubled way. All the rest of them have been so nice and even—but—this one. Why, it looks as if she didn’t know what she was about!

Their eyes met—something flashed to life, passed between them; then, as if with an effort, they seemed to pull away from each other. A moment Mrs. Hale sat there, her hands folded over that sewing which was so unlike all the rest of the sewing. Then she had pulled a knot and drawn the threads.

Oh, what are you doing, Mrs. Hale? asked the sheriff’s wife, startled.

Just pulling out a stitch or two that’s not sewed very good, said Mrs. Hale mildly.

I don’t think we ought to touch things, Mrs. Peters said, a little helplessly.

I’ll just finish up this end, answered Mrs. Hale, still in that mild, matter-of-fact fashion.

She threaded a needle and started to replace bad sewing with good. For a little while she sewed in silence. Then, in that thin, timid voice, she heard:

Mrs. Hale!

Yes, Mrs. Peters?

What do you suppose she was so—nervous about?

"Oh, I don’t know, said Mrs. Hale, as if dismissing a thing not important enough to spend much time on. I don’t know as she was—nervous. I sew awful queer sometimes when I’m just tired."

She cut a thread, and out of the corner of her eye looked up at Mrs. Peters. The small, lean face of the sheriff’s wife seemed to have tightened up. Her eyes had that look of peering into something. But the next moment she moved, and said in her thin, indecisive way:

Well, I must get those clothes wrapped. They may be through sooner than we think. I wonder where I could find a piece of paper—and string.

In that cupboard, maybe, suggested Mrs. Hale, after a glance around.

One piece of the crazy sewing remained unripped. Mrs. Peters’s back turned, Martha Hale now scrutinized that piece, compared it with the dainty, accurate sewing of the other blocks. The difference was startling. Holding this block made her feel queer, as if the distracted thoughts of the woman who had perhaps turned to it to try and quiet herself were communicating themselves to her.

Mrs. Peters’s voice roused her.

Here’s a birdcage, she said. Did she have a bird, Mrs. Hale?

Why, I don’t know whether she did or not. She turned to look at the cage Mrs. Peters was holding up. I’ve not been here in so long. She sighed. There was a man round last year selling canaries cheap—but I don’t know as she took one. Maybe she did. She used to sing real pretty herself.

Mrs. Peters looked around the kitchen.

Seems kind of funny to think of a bird here. She half laughed—an attempt to put up a barrier. But she must have had one—or why would she have a cage? I wonder what happened to it.

I suppose maybe the cat got it, suggested Mrs. Hale, resuming her sewing.

No, she didn’t have a cat. She’s got that feeling some people have about cats—being afraid of them. When they brought her to our house yesterday, my cat got in the room, and she was real upset and asked me to take it out.

My sister Bessie was like that, laughed Mrs. Hale.

The sheriff’s wife did not reply. The silence made Mrs. Hale turn around. Mrs. Peters was examining the birdcage.

Look at this door, she said slowly. It’s broke. One hinge has been pulled apart.

Mrs. Hale came nearer.

Looks as if some one must have been—rough with it.

Again their eyes met—startled, questioning, apprehensive. For a moment neither spoke nor stirred. Then Mrs. Hale, turning away, said brusquely:

If they’re going to find any evidence, I wish they’d be about it. I don’t like this place.

But I’m awful glad you came with me, Mrs. Hale. Mrs. Peters put the birdcage on the table and sat down. It would be lone-some for me—sitting here alone.

Yes, it would, wouldn’t it? agreed Mrs. Hale, a certain determined naturalness in her voice. She picked up the sewing, but now it dropped in her lap, and she murmured in a different voice: "But I tell you what I do wish, Mrs. Peters. I wish I had come over sometimes when she was here. I wish—I had."

But of course you were awful busy, Mrs. Hale. Your house—and your children.

I could’ve come, retorted Mrs. Hale shortly. I stayed away because it weren’t cheerful—and that’s why I ought to have come. I—she looked around—I’ve never liked this place. Maybe because it’s down in a hollow and you don’t see the road. I don’t know what it is, but it’s a lonesome place, and always was. I wish I had come over to see Minnie Foster sometimes. I can see now— She did not put it into words.

Well, you mustn’t reproach yourself, counseled Mrs. Peters. Somehow, we just don’t see how it is with other folks till—something comes up.

Not having children makes less work, mused Mrs. Hale, after a silence, but it makes a quiet house—and Wright out to work all day—and no company when he did come in. Did you know John Wright, Mrs. Peters?

Not to know him. I’ve seen him in town. They say he was a good man.

Yes—good, conceded John Wright’s neighbor grimly. He didn’t drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him— She stopped, shivered a little. Like a raw wind that gets to the bone. Her eye fell upon the cage on the table before her, and she added, almost bitterly: I should think she would’ve wanted a bird!

Suddenly she leaned forward, looking intently at the cage. But what do you s’pose went wrong with it?

I don’t know, returned Mrs. Peters; unless it got sick and died.

But after she said it she reached over and swung the broken door. Both women watched it as if somehow held by it.

You didn’t know—her? Mrs. Hale asked, a gentler note in her voice.

Not till they brought her yesterday,